If both the new far right and the liberal centre crave symbols untouched by history, then an eye for the absurd is crucial in moments such as this. Faced with a vision of America invading itself, the time is ripe to consider the breakdown of an empire which has thwarted popular struggles for decades. Only genuine alternatives to this state of decrepitude can ward off even crueller self-parodies. Until then, the farce will go on.

COVID was not planned, the election was not stolen, and the Democrats are not running a pedophile ring. However, there are some serious problems with how powerful groups and the media have framed the events. In particular, the storming of the Capitol building is being used to reaffirm the greatness of America’s pre-Trump “democracy” even though capitalism has existed in opposition to that democracy for more than a century.

If acquiescence to the far-right was not obvious before, it is now. But we cannot lose sight of the bigger picture. The same police criticized for killing Black people are now being entrusted with stopping white supremacy. The security agencies that surveil activists are now seen as the solution to avoiding another far-right coup. Even the most well-meaning law cannot avoid this contradiction.

The real lesson we should learn from the rise of a demagogue such as Trump, who received 74 million votes, and a pandemic that our for-profit health care industry proved unable to contain, is that we are losing control as a nation and as a species. Far more dangerous demagogues will arise from the imperial and neoliberal policies the Biden administration will embrace.

Recent reporting by the Guardian reinforces the false (and dangerous) impression that the United States is threatened by Chinese and Russian expansionism and that the Pentagon is justified in adopting an even more aggressive posture toward Chinese naval forces in the South China Sea. With liberal ‘journalism’ such as this, who needs US government propaganda?

The case of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou has generated a mountain of press coverage, but precious little of it—including John Ivison’s National Post op-ed—exhibits a meaningful understanding of Canada’s unjust extradition regime. What’s more, there are strong grounds to believe that the United States government’s allegations against Meng are political in nature, and meant to disguise ulterior geopolitical motives.

Racist fears about China have existed for more than a century in the United States. ‘Yellow Peril’ emerged as a mechanism to control and exploit migrant Chinese workers fleeing from the devastation that the West’s Opium Wars imposed on China. Today, this racism has manifested in tandem with contemporary forms of anti-communism to demonize China in mainstream politics and media.

The key question revolves around progressives inside and outside the Democratic Party. Do enough of them have the needed clarity of understanding, courage to act, and wisdom to see their deficit in terms of strong organization? Can those who do seize the opportunity to ride a return of class politics into US society? Will they effectively resist both major parties’ efforts to silence and destroy them?

The fickle corporate boss model of the US presidency may have run its course, but settler colonial racism remains intact, as does the possibility of national convulsion and white terror in an eclipsing empire—that is, unless socialism prevails in streets and state at once. The outcome of the US elections is too feeble an attempt to keep deferring the lid blowing off the boiling pot.

Given the evidence that business-as-usual will continue in the Biden years, perhaps it’s time to take that advice from Cornel West, absorb the truth about Biden’s future national security squad, and act accordingly. There’s no top-down salvation on the agenda—not from Joe or his crew of consummate insiders. Pressure and change will flow from the grassroots or it won’t come at all.